"Lifting up the world with a Oneness-Heart"

Professors

Professor Brading is a Fellow and Tutor in Physiology at Lady Margaret Hall. She was appointed to her College Fellowship here in 1968 and to a University Lectureship in 1972. Professor Brading worked initially to investigate trans-membrane ionic movements in smooth muscle cells using radioactive tracers, and this led to studying the mechanisms of the action of drugs on smooth muscle. Interactions with the Urology Department at the Churchill Hospital resulted in an interest in the lower urinary tract, and led to the setting up of the Oxford Continence Group, which she now heads. Professor Brading has edited many publications including several books.

She is the author of The Autonomic Nervous System and its Effectors.

Dr. Geeta Kingdon

Dr. Geeta Kingdon is based at the Centre for the Study of African Economies here at the University of Oxford. She lectures on “Human Capital and the Economics of Education” and her research interests include gender discrimination in the labour market and unemployment in India and South Africa. She is an expert in her field and has published widely.

Professor Alison Noble

Professor Noble was made a Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford in 2002. She is one of the University’s youngest Professors. Professor Noble is also Co-Director of the Medical Vision Laboratory and a Fellow of Oriel College. Her current research involves medical imaging, particularly the role of ultrasound imaging for soft-tissue disease diagnosis and therapeutic treatments. She holds several US and UK patents and has published around 100 research articles related to computer vision. Recently Professor Noble was named in The Independent on Sunday as one of the top medical engineers in the country.

[Throughout the ceremony, an international choir of Sri Chinmoy’s students heralded each new lift by singing:]

“Lifting Up the World
With a Oneness-Heart;
The Hour of God
And His Victory’s Start.”

Professor Frances J. Stewart

Professor Stewart is Professor of Development Economics and a Fellow of Somerville College. She has served as the visionary Director of the International Development Centre at the University of Oxford for the past ten years. Professor Stewart is a leading international expert in the field of Development Economics. She has a strong commitment to the poor and the marginalised, as shown in her research work, which concerns different aspects of poverty in developing countries. Professor Stewart is retiring this year to undertake a new challenge as Director of the newly established Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, funded by the Government’s Department of International Development.

Reverend Marcus Braybrooke

Sri Chinmoy would now like to honour someone who, while not specifically a member of the academic community here at Oxford, is a very good friend of Sri Chinmoy’s and a gentleman whose work is based in Oxford, but is worldwide. A priest in the Church of England and a prolific author, Reverend Marcus Braybrooke is a sage and an elder in the global interfaith movement, to which he has dedicated his entire life through a number of different organisations, including most especially the World Congress of Faiths and the International Interfaith Centre in Oxford, as well as the Council of Christians and Jews of the UK, and many others. For decades he has built up the movement through his leadership in countless programmes, and he knows more about the interfaith movement than just about anyone. His wisdom on questions at the heart of this work grows from a lifetime of experience, personal relationships across cultural and religious boundaries and deep, theologically informed reflection.

Professor Colin Clarke

Professor Colin Clarke moved to the University of Oxford in the early 1980’s and is Professor of Social and Urban Geography. He is a Fellow of Jesus College. Professor Clarke has carried out numerous field investigations in Mexico and the Caribbean. He is Chairman of the Faculty Board of Anthropology and Geography, Chairman of the Inter-Faculty Committee for Latin American Studies and joint editor of the Bulletin of Latin American Research. Professor Clarke has published over 90 papers and chapters, as well as several hooks. He is an internationally renowned authority on Latin American Studies.

Professor Peter Hainsworth

Professor Hainsworth is a Rhodes Trust D.M. Stewart Fellow in Modern Languages and has been a Tutor and Professor in Italian at Lady Margaret Hall since 1979. His research interests lie mainly in 13th and 14th century and modern-day poetry of Italy. Professor Hainsworth has published a study of the great 14th century poet, Petrarch. He is also joint editor of the Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. He is honoured today together with his wife Jane.

Professor Philip K. Maini

Professor Maini is Professor and Head of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Oxford. His family originates from India, but he was brought up and educated in Northern Ireland. Professor Maini’s research interests lie in deterministic modelling of emhryological pattern formation and in wound healing. He has published over 150 articles and books. Professor Maini is the managing editor of the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology and is also a member of the editorial board of numerous leading scientific journals.

Professor Martin Kemp

Professor Kemp is currently Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford. He has researched the art, science and technology of the renowned Leonardo da Vinci on an extensive basis. The continuing theme of Professor Kemp’s research has been the relationship between the scientific models of nature and the theory and practice of art. Professor Kemp is a world-renowned author. He writes regularly about living artists, as well as Renaissance artists, and is also editor and co-author of The Oxford History of Western Art. He has a regular column in the prestigious journal Nature and broadcasts extensively on television and radio.

Dr. Peter Carey

Dr. Carey is a Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford. His research work is centred on the history, contemporary politics and socio-economic development of South-East Asia. Dr. Carey has published hooks on East Timor, Burma and Java. In 1983, he was inspired to take on the noble task of revealing to the world the truth about the terrible events that occurred in East Timor. He has tirelessly and courageously pursued this calling over the years. His frank and unflinching efforts eventually proved to be a powerful beacon of inspiration in the struggle of the East Timorese people for independence.

Professor Avi Shlaim

Professor Avi Shlaim was appointed Professor of International Relations in 1987. He lectures on international relations in the Middle East. Professor Shlaim is also a Professorial Fellow at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College. Professor Shlaim was horn in Baghdad but grew up in Israel. His main research interest is in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Professor Shlaim is an internationally recognised authority in the field of international relations and has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the complex issues that beset the Middle East. He has authored numerous books, is a frequent contributor to newspapers and is a regular commentator on radio and television.

Professor Andrew Briggs

Professor Briggs is Professor of Materials at the University of Oxford and the Director of the Quantum Information Processing Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration. Professor Briggs has a strong track record in the study of nanotechnology. He has over 300 publications to his credit, including five books. Future developments in quantum information processing will radically change the way we store and process information. The University of Oxford leads the world in this area. Over the next five years, the direction of a substantial amount of research in quantum information processing in the UK will be shaped by Professor Briggs. Professor Briggs is joined today by his wife Diana.

Professor John Kelly

Professor Kelly is Professor of English Language and Literature and a Fellow of St. John’s College. He is interested in the fiction and modern poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially Yeats and Eliot. In 1999, Professor Kelly was elected the first O’Donnell Professor in Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame in the USA. Professor Kelly is the editor of The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, which is being published in 12 volumes. For many years John Kelly was the Director of the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland. Professor Kelly has championed the cause of making great and inspiring literature more accessible to ordinary people. He is founder and trustee of the St. John’s College Robert Graves Trust, which is collecting and editing unpublished manuscripts of this world-renowned writer and making them publicly accessible on the Internet. Professor Kelly is here today with his wife Christine.

Professor Theo H. van Lint

Professor van Lint is the Calouste Gulbenkian Professor of Armenian Studies at the Faculty of Oriental Studies here at the University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow of Pembroke College. Professor van Lint grew up and was educated in the Netherlands. He received his D.Phil. from the University of Leiden in 1996. Professor van Lint has a special interest in poetry. Armenian studies have been pursued at Oxford since the mid-19th century. The establishment in 1965 of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship has guaranteed a permanent place for Armenian studies in the broader field of the Near East. Oxford is the only university in the United Kingdom where Armenian may be studied.

Professor David Coleman

Professor Coleman is a Lecturer in Human Sciences and Professor of Demography in the Department of Social Policy and Social Work. Between 1985 and 1987, he worked for the British Government as the Special Adviser to the Home Secretary, and then to the Ministers of Housing and of the Environment. He has also worked as a consultant for the United Nations. Professor Coleman’s research interests include the comparative demographic trends of the industrialised world, immigration trends and policies and the demography of ethnic minorities. He has published more than 90 papers and eight books. In 1997, Professor Coleman was elected to the Council of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

Professor Robert E.M. Hedges

Professor Hedges is Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit. His interests lie in recovering palaeodietary and environmental information concerning humans and animals in an archaeological context. This work has close connections with radiocarbon dating, with the diagenetic alteration of bone during burial and with the identification of surviving biomolecules. A particular interest of Professor Hedges is in bone turnover rates and the recovery of time-dependent information. Professor Hedges is here today with his wife Laurie, who is a music teacher.

Professor John B. Knight

Professor Knight has been Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford since 1966. He is also Vice-Principal and Academic and Investment Bursar at St. Edmund Hall. His research interests are focused on Development Economics with particular reference to China and Africa, and he is a founding member of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford. Professor Knight is an Economic and Research Adviser to the Ministry of Labour in China, a frequent consultant to the World Bank and, from 1987 to 1988, he served on the United Nations Committee for Development Planning.

Professor Zhan Feng Cui

Professor Zhan Feng Cui is the Donald Pollock Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College. His research interests are focused on bioseparation and bioprocessing, tissue engineering, membrane separation and environmental biotechnology. An example of his extremely valuable work is the development of state-of-the-art technology to render polluted water harmless to the environment. Professor Zhan Feng Cui has published widely and has received numerous awards, including the Foresight Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering, for his significant contributions to science.

Professor Brian Catling

Professor Catling is Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, Head of Sculpture at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and a Fellow of Lineacre College. He is a sculptor, poet and performance artist and has had several solo exhibitions, including The Blindings at the Serpentine Gallery in London. He has performed throughout Europe and the Far East and has a number of publications to his credit. Some of Professor Catling’s poetry is included in The New British Poetry, published by Paladin Press. Professor Catling was recently awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for innovation in the visual arts. Professor Catling places himself outside the mainstream and said of his recent award, “I will use the money to fund major largescale projects in video and performance, which up to now have been screaming from the dusty shelf of dreams.”

Professor Catling is here today with his wife, Dr. Sarah Simblet, an artist and writer.

Dr. Gerard Morris (Sarvosmi)

Dr. Gerard Morris was appointed as a scientist at the University of Oxford in 1987, the same year he received his Ph.D. from the University of London. In 2001, Dr. Morris left the University and joined a biotechnology company for which he now heads the preclinical product development section. His current research involves the development of new tumour-targeting compounds for the treatment of cancer. Dr. Morris has a US patent and a worldwide patent and has published some 100 scientific articles.

Dr. Piyasi Morris

Dr. Piyasi Morris completed her D.Phil. at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, in 1982. Her field is Radiation Biology. She now works as a teacher.

Reverend Marcus Braybrooke presented Sri Chinmoy with his latest compilation entitled 1,000 World Prayers. This volume contains several prayers by Sri Chinmoy. Upon receiving the book from Reverend Braybrooke, Sri Chinmoy said, “It is our joint prayers that will be able to save the world.”

Reverend Braybrooke replied, “No, not our prayers, but your prayers at the United Nations will save the world.”